Friday, March 14, 2008

Atlanta at Night postcard

Ahh – the old times camera trick! Give your lens a tiny aperture and leave it on a couple of seconds. If you do it watching the I-75 traffic you should have a two parallel trails of red blurred lights and two of white trails. This picture must have been taken on the North Avenue Bridge, right next to the Varsity Restaurant (“World’s Largest Drive-In”) on the left of the bridge and Georgia Tech campus on the right.

See the skyline on the left, after half ways up. See the blue illumination? That is the Regency Hotel with the Polaris Lounge on top that rotates. It is on Peachtree Street near the fork of West Peachtree Street. The Polaris used to be a fantastic view, before you had a drink, if you took your time, you would have seen the entire horizon surrounding Atlanta, which included Dobbins Air Force Base and Marietta, by slowly rotating around – sort of like a Merry-Go-Round.

A year or so before this picture was taken we used to love to take out of town visitors to the Polaris. Then they built taller buildings all around the Regency, which blocked the long beautiful view. Now, I bet a picture taken from the same spot on North Avenue Bridge the Polaris would not be visible. Hogs!